Slice and Animate Pictures

Learn how to slice and animate pictures in PowerPoint.

Author:Geetesh Bajaj

Product/Version: PowerPoint

OS: Windows 7 and higher

Date Created: September 18, 2014Last Updated: September 18, 2014

You can crop pictures in PowerPoint, and of course you can animate them. But as you may observe
frequently in life, synergy yields results that exceed the mere sum of two or more initiatives. And that's
true in a way for the technique we will explore on this page, we call this Slice and Animate. The two
techniques being used for this synergy are cropping pictures and adding animation. Follow these steps
to learn more:

Open a new or existing presentation, and
insert a picture on a blank slide.
Figure 1, below shows a selected picture.

Figure 1: Picture selected

Now, make the Guides
visible, as shown in Figure 2. Note that the guides by default span to intersect exactly
at the center of the slide (refer to Figure 2 again).

Figure 2: Guides made visible

Duplicate the
selected image three time so that it makes four copies of the photo, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Make copies of the picture

Tip: Use the Ctrl+D keyboard shortcut to duplicate selected objects such
as a picture within PowerPoint versions on Windows. If you are using a Mac version of PowerPoint, use
Command+D instead.

Select all the four pictures (original plus three duplicated copies), and
align them
in a way so that each of them is placed over the other.

Tip: Select all pictures and choose the Align Top and
Align Left options.

Now select the top most picture and access the Picture Tools Format contextual tab on
the Ribbon.
Click the Crop button, as shown highlighted
in red within Figure 4.

Figure 4: Crop button

When you click the Crop button, dark crop handles appear on the edge of the picture,
as shown on Figure 5.

Figure 5: Result of applying Crop option on a picture

Now, select the bottom-right corner handle (highlighted in red within
Figure 5), press and hold Shift key while you drag the handle inward to
the diagonally opposite side of the handle. Drag up till where the guides intersect at the center of the
slide, as shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6: Picture being cropped

In Figure 7, below you can see that the picture is cropped to a quarter of its
original size. Click anywhere on the slide to get out of crop mode.

Figure 7: Picture cropped

Similarly select the other corner handles (of other pictures) and crop them to the opposite directions, make sure you press and hold Shift key. Figure 8 shows the final
result of the pictures. Note that all the four pictures are cropped and now are individual cropped
images on the slide giving an illusion of being one picture.

Figure 8: All pictures cropped

Now, you can apply animation to these
individual cropped pictures. The sample presentations below provide an idea of the end result.

Have your ever used keyboard shortcuts and sequences in PowerPoint? Or are you a complete keyboard aficionado?
Do you want to learn about some new shortcuts? Or do you want to know if your favorite keyboard shortcuts are documented?